On the mound in Year 10, Aaron Nola is exactly where he has always wanted to be

CLEARWATER, Fla. — It was a week before opening day, and Aaron Nola was smiling. Not for any specific reason. Nobody told a joke or won the lottery or shared a video of deer following a puppy through a doggy door. He was standing in the corner of a clubhouse that has been his offseason home for nearly a decade, one of his closest teammates to his left, a gaggle of familiar faces to his right. That seemed to be enough.

“It’s just really nice to be back with this group of guys,” Nola said as he prepared for some late-spring maintenance work. “The staff. The coaches. This is where everything started. Nothing has changed. I know what I’m getting into. I get to live in my house. Which is great. Don’t have to find a new place to live, somewhere else we’re not as familiar with. My wife is comfortable here, has good friendships here, good relationship here. So nothing has changed in that aspect, besides, now, just growing those friendships and relationships. That’s important for her, and it’s important for me to see her do that. I just think with this group of guys, with how much fun we have — I just enjoy coming to work every day.”

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You did not need to remind him of how different things could be. Nola has thought about it constantly, from his first offseason workout as a newly-minted member of baseball’s nine-figure club to his first official bullpen session of spring training. No doubt, he will be thinking about it on Saturday, when he climbs atop the mound at Citizens Bank Park for a 10th straight season to face the team he and the Phillies have vanquished in each of the last two Octobers.

Free agency is a funny business, especially in baseball. You spend six years establishing yourself in a city, in a clubhouse, among a group of teammates. You grow comfortable, you grow up, you grow your reputation. The whole time this is happening, you grow more and more aware of how the business works.

Typically, a player the caliber of Nola will spend the first two or three years of his career being wildly underpaid relative to his free market value. He will spend the next three or four years gradually becoming less so. By the time he reaches free agency, at the tail end of or past his physical peak, his career earnings will be a third or a fourth of what he might have commanded on a true open market.

It can be a difficult conundrum to conceptualize for anybody who hasn’t and never will be in a position to sign a seven-year, $172 million contract like the one Nola inked with the Phillies in November. Give us fulfillment, give us subsistence, and maybe give us a little something to throw down on the ponies. Or so we think.

It’s all relative, ain’t it? If you don’t think so, think of the last time you discovered that one of your peers was earning more than you. Then, think about how somebody like Nola or Zack Wheeler must feel when they hear about Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

When the Phillies were negotiating with Nola this offseason, they were also putting together an “aggressive” bid for Yamamoto, a 25-year-old Japanese free agent who ultimately signed a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers. The important context: Nola’s last contract with the Phillies was for five years and $56.5 million, which he signed at the age of 26.

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So, yeah, Nola may have loved Philadelphia, and his teammates, and his organization. At the end of the day, though, you can only be in love if yours is met with reciprocal action.

If it isn’t? Then what’s it gonna be? Seven years to maximize your personal comfort? Or seven years to make up for lost time and maximize your generational wealth?

“It would have been different, for sure,” Nola said. “I’m glad we got things done early. I look back now and see the guys who haven’t signed yet, it’s probably tough for them and tough if they have families and kids. They don’t know where they are going to be, the season is going to start in a few days. I can only imagine.”

Anybody who has paid attention to Phillies baseball for the last decade will understand that it is impossible to label Nola’s free agency with a preemptive happily-ever-after. He is nearing 31 years old and has thrown nearly 1,500 innings. The actuarial tables offer plenty of red flags. Sentiment is often at odds with sound business decisions.

Yet, the business will be fine. The sacrifices that the Phillies will need to make if Nola ages ungracefully will be negligible as long as they do the bedrock things of winning organizations. Draft, develop, sign key young players to below-market contracts. Without those things, they won’t sustain success, with or without Nola.

With him, they at least have a guy who exemplifies the organization they strive to be.

“To be able to try to make a run for the third year in a row with the same group of guys,” Nola said, “it’s pretty special.”

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